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Easy Debian

Revision as of 10:21, 19 February 2010

This package, when installed, will give you OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, the LXDE Desktop Environment, Firefox 3.0 (called Iceweasel in Debian) with Java and Flash support, printing support, and access to thousands of applications that can be easily browsed and downloaded.

This package will give you all of these applications without any need for installing dependencies or other applications, and it should work on all of the tablets.

What you need:

• You need 2.5 GB free on one of your memory cards, although after installing, you will only need 2 GB.
• You need to keep your expectations reasonable. Big desktop applications like OpenOffice and Firefox run slowly on the tablet. They are designed for big, power-hungry CPUs. The N8x0's processor is comparable to a Pentium II processor. Just imagine running these apps on your computer from the mid-90s (remember Windows 95?), and you'll get the idea. But sometimes, you really need something on the tablet that only these apps can provide, like MS Word compatibility or Java applets.

Install instructions:

• You need to install the easy-deb-chroot package. (If you want the very latest version enable the "extras-devel" repository. Yes, that is a dangerous area and you should disable it as soon as you are done installing Easy Debian, but Easy Debian is rather safe and it is optified.)

• Once installed several new shortcut icons will be available on the applications menu. You will need to first run the one called "Debian Image Installer". A terminal program will open and ask you where to place the image file (again, it is a 2 GB file), either on the N900's built in storage (under MyDocs), or on an external MicroSD card (if available). That will start the download and eventual extraction of the image file. It will take more than a half hour to download if you have fast Internet connection, and another 30 minutes to extract it on your tablet.

• This step is an alternate way to do the previous step. You can manually download the image file from here. Afterward you will have to copy it into /home/user/MyDocs/ or into /media/mmc1/ depending on if you want it installed on the internal storage or on a removable storage. Then, when you run "Debian Image Installer" it will detect that you already have the file and proceed to extract it and set it up for you.

• Finally, when you get the "Congratulations!" message, REBOOT.

Using the LXDE Environment:

• To launch a session of LXDE (a light weight desktop environment) whith several applications already installed in it, including OpenOffice.org, simply click on the "Debian LXDE" icon shortcut on the application menu.
• LXDE's application menu is found at the top left corner of the screen.
• To momentarily go back into the Maemo environment, simply press Ctrl Backspace.
• Exiting LXDE: Log out, don't just close the window.

Using debbie

From within XTerminal single Easy-Debian commands can be launched with user privileges by debbie <command>, where command can be simple command-line commands with standard output or programs to be run under a window manager, such as ooffice. If <command> includes file names, those should be given with absolute path, i.e., /home/user/....

This is particularly useful for creating shortcuts. For example, a file ooo.desktop with content

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=ooo
Icon=ooo-writer
Exec=debbie ooffice
Type=Application

that is put into /usr/share/applications/hildon or (since fw 2009.51) /home/user/.local/share/applications/hildon allows one to start ooffice directly from the Maemo Applications Menu without having first to launch LXDE.

Startup scripts

If they exist, the following scripts (which need to be executable) serve as startup scripts as follows

$CHROOT/var/run/onfirstchroot-ext.rc 

This script will run commands as root in maemo the first time you "open" a chroot. So this is where you could force the processor to "performance mode" or some such thing.

$CHROOT/var/run/onfirstchroot.rc 

This script will run commands as root in the chroot the first time you "open" a chroot. For example, if you have installed cups within Easy Debian, this script should contain "/etc/init.d/cups restart".

$CHROOT/var/run/onchroot-ext.rc 

This script will run commands as root in maemo every time you run a chroot command.

$CHROOT/var/run/onchroot.rc 

This script will run commands as root in the chroot every time you run a chroot command.

Here $CHROOT is the mount point of the Debian system (to be omitted when aleady in chroot).

In order to run a command in one of these scripts as "user", preface the command with su user -c

Installing Applications

Applications can be installed using apt-get or Synaptic. The image does not have an up-to-date package list, however. It is important that you perform an apt-get update or use Edit -> Reload Package Information within Synaptic.

Warning: Those of you familiar with Debian or other similar Linux distributions know that it is very easy to keep the distro up to date by means of the apt-get command. However, there is currently a problem with some of the central Easy Debian apps in the Debian Squeeze repositories. Therefore, it is recommended that for the moment you simply use the image as is. Do not perform an upgrade. This warning will be removed when this issue is resolved.

FAQ

Q: I chose Iceweasel, but nothing happened!
A: Be patient. Iceweasel has no splash screen and a very long startup time. Use Epiphany for faster startup while retaining the ability to use Java and Flash plugins.

Q: How do I get to the OK button in the huge dialog box that just popped up?
A: DIABLO/N8x0: If you choose the "Toggle Movable Windows" icon in the menu, you will switch to a patched version of the Matchbox Window Manager that lets you move the big dialog boxes used by some Debian apps so you can get to the OK button. When you want to go back to "Normal" OS2008 window behavior, select this menu item again.
A: FREMANTLE/N900: You'll need to use LXDE to access the entire dialog. Use the Ctrl-. key combination to move windows with the stylus.

Q: How do I get the virtual keyboard to pop up in Debian Apps?
A: DIABLO/N8x0: Select the "Set Debian HW Keys" menu item; wait a bit, then you can press the minus (-) hardware key followed by the menu hardware key to toggle the Matchbox Keyboard. Press the (-) key then the (+) key to toggle between normal and mini (one-line) keyboards.
A: FREMANTLE/N900: There is no virtual keyboard in Maemo for Debian apps.

Q: How do I make Debian apps fullscreen?
A: Select the "Set Debian HW Keys" menu item; wait a bit, then you can press (DIABLO/N8x0) the minus (-) hardware key followed by the "fullscreen" hardware key or (FREMANTLE/N900) the Ctrl-Uparrow to toggle fullscreen for any app.

Q: DIABLO/N8x0: How do I get the best turbo speed from OpenOffice, Firefox and other big apps?
A: Make sure you have the maximum amount of virtual memory enabled in your Control Panel / Memory dialog. Then select the "Set CPU to Performance mode" menu item and launch your app. Remember to set the CPU to On-Demand mode when you're done using the big app, because Performance mode sucks your battery faster. But it still isn't as bad as the battery life of your average laptop...

Q: English isn't my first language. How do I change this to my language?
A: Please click on the "Debian chroot" icon and type the following command:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Choose your language(s).

Note that you should choose the language with no period between the language and the iso code (eg. "en_CA ISO-8859-1"), and optionally, the utf-8 version, too (eg. "en_CA.UTF-8").

Q: How do I find the amount of space left for applications?
A: From the prompt in Debian Chroot menu item:

df -h /

Look under AVAIL.

Q: I want to install more applications! How do I do that?
A: First, you have to update the repository lists. From the prompt in Debian Chroot menu item:

apt-get update

Now, you must get some space back! (DIABLO/N8x0) There's almost no extra room in the image file.

apt-get install localepurge; localepurge

This will get you at least 80MB back. You should probably do this first, before starting to install. Running out of space during an install in Debian is ugly.

Also, when downloading packages, remember to frequently use "apt-get clean" to clear out old downloaded packages. That will help with free space.

If you're comfortable with the command line, you can use the technique listed in this post to double your install space.

Even with all of these tricks, you'll still run out of room fairly quickly. You'll probably have to uninstall packages in order to add new ones.

More advanced users can put a minimal system into an empty image and build a custom set of apps using this post. The most advanced and best way: partition your SD card and put your Debian fs there.

Q: What's this "Iceweasel"?
A: Iceweasel is the Debian name for Firefox. It's a long story, but in short, Mozilla and Debian had a philosophical disagreement that ended in Debian renaming Firefox to Iceweasel.

Q: How is this different than the Deblet project?
A: Easy Debian uses a fully installed Debian system to run applications inside of Maemo. The Deblet project helps you install a bootable Debian system from scratch; Deblet is mainly designed for booting to an alternate OS.

Q: I already have Debian in a partition, or I'm running Deblet. How can I use your package with my Debian?
A: Edit the /home/user/.chroot file to point to your Debian partition or image file. Easy Debian will do the rest.

NOTE: If you are using Deblet, delete the /home/user/.synchroot file before running Easy Debian for the first time, so your Deblet config files don't get overwritten. Remember that you'll need to make a user called "user" in Deblet (with the proper ID) for things to work correctly. Also note that your maemo home directory will be used by default. This can also be changed in the .chroot file.